My Book 2 TB Drive recognized as a USB Mass storage device but not as a drive in My computer

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

Hi,

I have a My Book 2 TB Drive (Model: WD20000H1U-00). It’s been working fine for months. Suddenly it no longer appears as a drive in My computer. If I connect the drive to ANY PC (Windows7, Windows Vista, Windows XP) they all respond the same. USB recognizes the device as a “USB Mass Storage device” but the drive never shows in My Computer. If I click the ICON to safely eject USB devices it is listed as “USB MASS STORAGE DEVICE”, or on my Windows7 PC it is listed as a “MY BOOK” but with no drive letter. It will “Safely eject the device” but again the PC doesn’t actually see the drive.

I ran the latest version of Western Digital LifeGuard Diagnostics. The quick test PASSED however the extended test IMMEDIATELY fails saying that it found bad sectors. When I first fire up the software the My Book is listed as “WD (USB)” with no serial number and the capacity is listed as 0 MB and the smart status says “? Not Available”.

Is there any hope that this drive is still OK? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

2

Does the drive show in Disk Management? If so maybe TestDisk  http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk will help

Joe

3

Hi Joe,

It does NOT show up in disc management. I ended up trying to format the drive using the Western Digital Data LifeGuard tool which also fails. It’s odd because via the LifeGuard tool the “Quick Test” Passes, if I select “Write Zeros” and then select “Quick Erase” it says “Pass” if I try Full Erase it says fail.

I’m pretty sure the drive is toast but I’ve never had one act like this before where USB recognizes it by the disc never shows up.